Five days went by. Five days, which Ana spent as a flower in the Rose Blanche, investigating the flowers' kidnapping with the passive and active help of Arte and Rubi.
Ana, from the moment she heard of these abductions from Arte, in her love for conspiracy theories, instantly theorized that they were all committed by the same person or group of people; there had to be something that compelled them to target Rose Blanche's flowers rather than any other random people. Of course, Ana considered the possibility that these kinds of sudden disappearances were common but that the words of them didn't reach her ears and that it just happened to have randomly struck Rose Blanche's nine times in a row, but the likelihood of that was low enough for her to dismiss it as a possibility.
As a result, Ana began her investigation with the assumption that the abductor was precisely after Rose Blanche's flowers, and the first step she took in her investigation was to try to figure out exactly what about Rose Blanche's flowers the abductors were after. To do so, Ana sought a physical description of the missing girls from Rubi and from people who knew them. Ana's findings revealed one simple fact: if the abductors were truly interested in Rose Blanche's flowers, it wasn't anything aesthetic or physically related, as each of the missing flowers was visually and physically distinct. Some of them were petite, some were average-sized, and some were even described as tall. Aesthetically, they were similar to most of Rose Blanche's flowers: pleasing to the eye, but once again, the girls' beauty was said to shine through in their own unique ways.
There seemed to be nothing linking the nine girls among themselves besides the fact that they were Rose Blanche’s flowers.
Only two of the nine girls were noticeably close to each other; they didn’t frequent the same kind of noble customers, and the only thing they might have had in common among themselves would have been their age or the fact that all these flowers belonged to the kind of flowers who, as Coral had explained in the bathroom, were flowers operating directly in carnal activities with nobles who came to them interested, which in this place and this very unique situation was not much of what could be called a helpful clue.
There was, so to speak, nothing the abducted flowers had in common; at least, that's what it seemed on a superficial level. Luckily for Ana, digging deeper beneath the superficial layer revealed something she was good at, or at the very least, familiar with.
***
"Aaaaargh! I’m done with this! Done!" Edya whined, throwing a tantrum like a little child.
"Come on. This is just reading; what’s so difficult about this?" Ina vented out, frustrated, onto Edya, whom she was trying to teach how to read. "Are you stupid or something?!"
"Yeah, that’s it. I’m stupid. Besides, who needs to know how to read anyway. Yeah, of course, I don’t even need this to know how to read to be a flower, hahaha... This is it, I don't need it anyway."
"I think she finally snapped," Ana said, laughing at her "comrade's" breakdown.
"Yeah. Then why use my room if it is just to give up so easily," Ina complained, as indeed both Ana and Edya were in Ina’s room trying to teach the only illiterate of the trio how to read.
"Who knows?" Ana, still amused by the situation, shrugged.
"And you, Princess, stop laughing like that! And help me with this idiot."
"Okay, okay. I’ll lend you a hand."
When exactly did the nickname "Princess" come along? Ana didn’t know for sure; it just happened that one day, Ina suddenly began to call her that way, and it stood there.
Ana became more acquainted with the two with whom she arrived at the Rose Blanche over the course of a few days. And, while Ana was still keeping a wary eye on Ina, whom she perceived as unfathomably suspicious and thus made a target for her bottomless curiosity, she learned how to live with the girl, who, despite their tumultuous first encounter, turned out to be rather respectable company once one got past the wall that is her taciturn personality.
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When the night came, Ana, just like every night of the week, sneaked out of her room. She would meet up with Arte, with whom she would discuss the results of her investigation.
"Hey Ana, don’t you think it should be time for you to go home now?"
"No, it’s not."
"I’ve been trying to cover you up, but Martha and even Xavier are starting to get worried about your absence."
Ana felt a pinch in her heart as she heard these words; to be honest, even though she had adjusted to life with the Rose Blanche, the mansion remained the only place she could fondly call home.
"That’s regrettable, but I can’t do it now, not so close to the truth."
"You’ve discovered something?"
"I think I have."
Ana excitedly flipped the pages of a notebook covered in scribbling and writing to the very last ones to show Arte.
"I've spoken to the flowers who were close to the missing girls, and from their testimony, each of the nine flowers was uniquely different from one another; there was nothing they all shared in common."
"At least that’s what it seemed, until I dug a little deeper into it. You see, here’s the thing, each of these flowers was different from one another, appearance-wise and even personality-wise; among them, five of them were "friendly," to say the least, and just happened to have "best friends." Try to figure out where I'm coming from now."
"I wouldn’t know. Does it have to do with the fact that you think that there is a rat within the Rose Blanche."
"I don't think; I just assume. If our "abductors" are looking for something specific about their targets, they must have someone local telling them who their target should be."In other words, a rat. Indeed."
"So if I get it right; you think that one of these girls' best friends is the rat you’re after."
"To tell you the truth, that’s what I initially thought, but the fact that none of these girls except two had "best friends" in common means that if I were to go down that path, I would be forced to consider not the existence of a single rat, but rather a few of them instead. But to answer your question, no, you were wrong; that was not the point I was trying to make. You see, I talked to these so-called best friends, and from their testimony, I've come to realize something these girls shared in common that I failed to consider. "To be fair, it wasn't something that was particularly obvious."
"What is it?"
"Each of the best friends corroborated that five of the nine missing girls complained of being late with their "cycle." ''
"Cycle?"
"Their menstrual cycle, Arte. I hope you’re not ignorant enough to not know what it is."
"Of— Of course I know what it is," Arte immediately defended.
"That’s a relief; at least I wouldn’t have to explain that. For a person working in this very particular line of work, menstrual cycles are something they have to keep a very keen eye on. But do you know what being late with her cycles means?"
"They might’ve been… pregnant."
"Bingo. Five of the "best friends" testified that they were late on theirs, and another girl, a roommate of one of the missing girls, confirmed that her roommate was also dealing with this "issue." This gives us a 6:9 ratio; don't you think we're finally clinging to something?"
"So you think they’ve been abducted because..."
" —Because they were pregnant? Yes."
"But why?"
"Truth be told, I really don’t know. But what I do know is that this case is not a "simple" case of flower abduction; it is a case of abducted noble-impregnated flowers."
With the truth finally sinking in, Arte seemed to have finally caught on that if these girls were truly pregnant, it would not be a mere pregnancy but one involving a commoner and a noble.
"I might be wrong, but this whole affair suddenly turned out sourer and nastier than what I imagined, don’t you think?"
"If... this is correct, then—"
"Then we must find the rat," Ana interrupted, feeling that Arte was about to request that she drop this case, as he always does every night. "That’s what we must do." First, we find the "rat," which I am fairly certain is roaming through the alley of the establishment looking for her next target; then, from her, we get a confession; and then, I will return to the mansion and leave this matter to you and the Rose Blanche Board to deal with. But as of now, all I need is your backup both here and at home for a couple of days, at best a week, and I promise you results. "So what do you think? Do we have a deal?" Ana asked, reaching her hand out to Arte.
Arte was obviously recalcitrant, but really wishing to put an end to whatever was going on, he reached out and shook Ana’s hand.
"A week. Just a week, after that, I will take you home myself. By force if need be so."
Chuckling "Understood," Ana simply replied.